Here Are the Craziest Places Where It’s Been a White Christmas

Hold on to your Santa hats: We've found the weirdest places where it's snowed right before December 25th. Spoiler alert: They're on the coast.

By
Tracey Minkin

Matti Niemi/Folio Images/Getty

Dreaming of a white Christmas? You probably aren't if you live at the beach, but it turns out that every once in a while, Mother Nature and Father Christmas get together and drop some of the white stuff where it doesn't really belong. Here are the weirdest snows that have arrived on the coast just in time for Christmas, and where they landed.

Jacksonville, Florida

Yes, Virginia, the state of Florida had itself a White Christmas in 1989. On December 22 and 23 of that year, a mess of Arctic air made it all the way to the Sunshine State, and with it, a wet snow that stuck to the ground. One inch was still there on Christmas Eve (the National Weather Service considers it an official White Christmas if there's an inch on Christmas morning). And while not officially a White Christmas by NWS standards, snow flurries were reported in Tampa and near Sarasota during that same holiday storm.

Savannah, Georgia

Georgia's historic city also became a winter wonderland for Christmas 1989, when it got 3.6 inches of snow from that same late-December mash-up of preciptation and the rarest of cold air. As Christmas morning dawned, 2 inches were still on the ground, and at least 1 inch hung around for a whole day after that.

Myrtle Beach and Charleston, South Carolina

That same 1989 blast from the North Pole put normally temperate Charleston under 8 inches of snow, and half of it was still on the ground on Christmas morning. Myrtle Beach was hit with 14 inches during the storm.

Wilmington and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina

A little more to the north, the Carolina coastline continued to log record-breaking snowfalls in Wilmington (15.3 inches) and Cape Hatteras (13.3 inches), making White Christmas a serious thing up and down the southeastern Coast in 1989.

Corpus Christi and Brownsville, Texas

Could polar air drop any lower down on the map and still be called polar? In 2004, frigid air teamed up with a storm that swung over the Gulf of Mexico and delivered a white Christmas to these two Texas coastal towns. Corpus Christi reported 4.4 inches of the stuff--its heaviest snowstorm on record. And it may be worth noting that Brownsville sits nearly on the same latitude as Miami, so we're talking a very, very southern White Christmas.